Chapter 58. Cheetahman, the Hero of Justice (2)
Yukgap and Victoria hurried straight to the police station.
By the time they arrived, the place was already filled with the cries of other parents.
“What do you mean our children were kidnapped?!”
“What are the police doing? Why aren’t you tracking them down already?!”
“Nothing happened to my child, right? Please tell me they’re okay!”
Every parent there had lost their composure.
The police were struggling to calm them down.
“We understand, so please calm down. At the moment, we’ve only received the ransom demands. If we switch to a public investigation too quickly, there’s a risk of provoking the kidnappers...”
The same cries and explanations went back and forth several times.
Subin, still trembling, explained what had happened.
“The parents were contacted after the children left for the field trip.”
She repeatedly wiped away her tears.
“They said they kidnapped the children and demanded one hundred million won per child. If we don’t pay, they said they can’t guarantee the children’s safety.”
Yukgap quickly asked,
“What about the teacher and the driver? They were on the bus too, weren’t they?”
“I don’t know. It looks like the entire bus was taken.”
Subin weakly shook her head.
Then she suddenly grabbed onto Yukgap with desperation in her voice.
“I know I have no right to ask this of you after how I treated you. But my son is in danger. You used to be one of Abraxas’s Twelve Archons. Isn’t there some way you can track them?”
“E-Even if you say that, this happened so suddenly...!”
Yukgap did not have any obvious solution either.
Tracking had never been his role.
That was No. 8’s job.
Yukgap had simply followed whatever trail the trackers found.
“What are you doing here?!”
A sharp voice suddenly cut through the chaos.
It was Subin’s ex-husband.
Subin looked at him with tear-filled eyes.
“You got the call too?”
“Of course I did. I’m Seongryeol’s father.”
He immediately turned on her.
“What are you doing showing your face here? What if this happened because of you too? Something similar happened before!”
Subin practically jumped.
“N-No! This has nothing to do with me! I swear!”
“I don’t trust you. I married you because I believed what you told me, and ever since then, mercenaries and criminals have repeatedly tried to kill both me and Seongryeol!”
His voice rose.
“I don’t trust you anymore, so get out! I’ll save Seongryeol myself!”
“I’m Seongryeol’s biological mother!”
Subin shouted through sobs.
“He’s my child! I gave birth to him! I have the right to save him too!”
There was a desperation in her voice unlike anything before.
Perhaps overwhelmed by it, her ex-husband softened slightly.
“For now, just stay quiet. I already prepared the ransom. If we pay, Seongryeol will come back safely.”
Subin immediately answered,
“Do you really believe that?”
“What are you talking about?”
Subin hurriedly explained.
“I’ve seen worse things in the underworld. Do you know how often kidnappers take the ransom and then sell the children anyway?”
“Then what do you want to do? Go back to your old job and storm the kidnappers yourself?”
The argument looked ready to explode again.
Then Victoria, who had been quietly listening, called to Subin.
“Hey. Hold on.”
Subin, still glaring at her ex-husband, turned irritably.
“What?”
Victoria spoke calmly.
“I don’t know if this will make you feel better, but your son is safe.”
Subin froze.
“He has a steady heartbeat.”
“How do you know that?”
Subin asked in shock.
Victoria took out her smartphone.
A series of complicated waves moved rhythmically across the screen.
“One of the eighty-eight support functions in the lunchbox I gave him is a heartbeat monitor. It can detect living creatures within a ten-meter radius and check their condition in real time.”
Victoria pointed to the readings.
“His heartbeat is stable, so he’s definitely not in immediate danger.”
“That lunchbox had a function like that too?”
Subin stared at her.
Victoria smiled confidently.
“And more importantly, I installed real-time satellite GPS tracking.”
“Whaaaat?!”
Subin raised her voice in disbelief.
Victoria skillfully operated her phone.
“More precisely, the GPS tracker lets us follow the route the lunchbox traveled. If we follow the signal, we should be able to find where the children are.”
Yukgap immediately spoke.
“Perfect. Then let’s tell the police.”
Subin shook her head.
“No. That’ll waste time.”
Yukgap frowned.
“Why?”
“They’ll start asking where the GPS system came from, why that lunchbox has it, how it works... They’ll investigate everything.”
Her face twisted with anxiety.
“And while that’s happening, we have no idea what could happen to my son.”
Just thinking about Seongryeol being in danger made her restless.
There was no time to explain every detail to the police.
Subin’s expression hardened with determination.
“Guide me there. I’m going myself.”
Even in broad daylight, the docks beneath the bridge were gloomy.
The teacher waited nervously with her gas mask hanging around her neck.
Before long, a long-haired man in a trench coat approached from the distance.
It was the broker she had met several times while preparing for today.
“The goods?”
The teacher gestured toward the bus parked nearby.
“They’re all asleep. That stuff worked well.”
The broker snorted.
“Of course it did. I got it from the Crescent Moon Auction.”
